Robert Baird

Kathryn Dawn Lang was country ... until she wasn't. A native of the Canadian province of Alberta, lang (who prefers her name lowercase) grew obsessed with Patsy Cline and country music in general before she was out of college. She joined the Patsy-focused country act The Reclines in 1983 in Edmonton. They released their first album, A Truly Western Experience, in 1984.

Styled as "cowpunk" by many, the album caught the ear of pub-rocker Dave Edmunds, who produced the band's next, rockier album, Angel with a Lariat. That album, in turn, found its way to Patsy Cline's one-time producer Owen Bradley, who in 1988 produced lang's solo debut, Shadowland, on Sire Records. Shadowland and the Reclines' final album, 1989's Absolute Torch and Twang, convinced lang that she was too adventurous—not to mention too gay and Canadian—for the 1980s country music establishment.

Discovering music as it is being recorded—singer Holly Cole seeks that kind of spontaneity on her recordings including her latest, Dark Moon on Rumpus Room/UMG Records. As she put it, she wanted this record with her longtime quartet to capture "the moment when the light turns on for us."

"On Dark Moon, you hear the essence of when we discover a song," she said during a recent interview. "We had very brief rehearsals, and then went in and recorded. I had a lot of faith in this band, and that's why I cherry-picked them. They know me, they know I'm a minimalist, and we were able to arrange in the studio. Some of the tracks are first takes. The more complex the arrangement, the longer it took. They are all three, four takes at the most. People have to be hard listeners in this band, or it will fail. That's the case on Temptation, and that's on this record."

Humble Pie: Smokin'
Analogue Productions APP 168 (LP). 1972/2024. The Pie, prods.; Alan O'Duffy, Keith Harwood, Kevin Gray, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½

The ultimate indication that an audiophile reissue is worth paying for lies in its resale value on the secondary markets, especially eBay and Discogs. If there are lots of copies for sale that are open and played, it's usually a sign that folks are disappointed. On the other hand, if a reissue title—and this covers Analogue Productions' 2009 reissue of Humble Pie's Smokin'—routinely fetches upwards of $100 on the secondary market (and sealed copies above $200), it means, first, that the pressing has probably sold out (a good sign) and, second, that it's probably worth the lucre.

In October 2024, AP repressed its much-sought-after 180gm reissue of Smokin', mastered by Kevin Gray from a ½" flat-tape copy of the original master tape. As this review was being written, copies were still available. It comes packaged in a Stoughton Printing tip-on jacket. It's a high-quality product all around.

"But it is the wildest, most incredible music story of all time and I'm at least mildly flattered that I played a miniscule part in it.

I'm even more pleased that it's all behind me."

—Dave Dexter Jr. From his autobiography, Playback

It's almost too easy to make Dave Dexter Jr. the villain in the story of the Beatles' fumbled introduction to America. A devoted denigrator of rock'n'roll who thought it was a passing fad meant for the kiddies, and who also thought John Lennon played "lousy harmonica," he was just one of the many older music fans who were sure that Elvis Presley's hips had been a corrupting influence on America's youth, not to mention on good music.

The head of International A&R at Capitol Records, then owned by the UK's EMI, Dexter was no fan of British acts in general. He also turned down Manfred Mann, The Animals, The Yardbirds, and The Hollies.

Caroline Shaw: Leonardo Da Vinci (soundtrack); Ethel String Quartet: Persist (Works by Allison Loggins-Hll, Migiwa "Miggy" Miyajima, Xavier Muzik, Sam Wu, and Leilehua Lanzilotti); Zlata Chochieva: Works for Piano and Orchestra; Rococo: Works by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Dvořák, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich; Tchaikovsky: The Seasons; Romance in F minor; Mozart: Serenata (Eine kleine Nachtmusik | Posthorn | Haffner).

The Violent Femmes: Hallowed Ground, 40th Anniversary Reissue; Christopher Owens: I Want To Run Barefoot Through Your Hair; Iron Maiden: Powerslave (40th Anniversary Edition); Lucinda Williams: Lucinda Williams Sings the Beatles from Abbey Road.

Two albums with the same title, by the same artist, basically released one week apart on the same planet? Even considering the dubious history of music-biz capers and catastrophes, the Lights on a Satellite kerfuffle is hilariously surreal. By the time it was discovered, covers were already printed and records were already pressed. It's so bizarre that it's tempting to suspect intergalactic powers were involved. Could the ghost of that interstellar traveler, Master Sun Ra, who thought space was the place, have had a hand in this unlikeliest of Saturnian conjunctions?

Fortunately, the two versions of Lights on a Satellite are very different.